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How to Break a Bad Habit
Using gatekeeping to narrow your choices
Twyla the beagle would (mostly) be a perfect puppy, except for one thing.
She’s always pooping in the basement.
This is not my first beagle rodeo, so I am familiar with naughty beagle behavior. Beagles are crazy food motivated. They are always trying to steal food off the table, dumpster dive for a stray scrap in the garbage or find a squirrel carcass to chomp on while walking.
You learn to accept and live with a certain level of chaos with beagles under your roof.
But Twyla was the first in our long line of beagles who consistently treated the basement like her own personal dumping ground.
When we first got her, we put up an old toddler gate to the basement to keep her out. But the gate was so old and beat up that it was constantly getting knocked over. It was a porous and inconsistent boundary at best.
We tried to constantly train and re-train her. If we caught her slinking downstairs, we redirected her outside with a stern voice. We praised her and gave her treats for going №2 n the backyard or while on a walk.
The process would work for a few days. Until I went downstairs and discovered another pile of fresh turds. Then the process started all over…
